A Presidential Visit To Columbus, Ohio!

As all of you probably know, in this presidential election, as well as for the last several election cycles, Ohio is what they call a "swing state" along with Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin and a few others. Basically, we Ohio voters haven't quite made up our minds yet, so we're not a "given" like , say, new York and California for the democrats, and Texas and Utah for the republicans, and we have a decent chunk of electoral votes to hand over to whomever we decide is worthy. So let's just say we get a lot of attention from the presidential candidates both in commercial time and in-person visits.

So...when Parental Unit found out that President Obama was holding a rally in the park just down the street from us (yes, I did a sweep of the park, along with some plain-clothed secret service agents, to rid the park of squirrels-we wouldn't want any of those varmints to drop a nut on the president while he was speaking, now would we?), she and I stood in line for over an hour just to get a ticket, a few days before his visit. For those of you who have not attended a presidential or presidential candidate rally, the security is pretty tight-as it should be. Each person can only pick up one ticket and must fill out a form with name and address-which we're assuming was run through some sort of background check.

The entire park was fenced, all of the surrounding streets were shut to traffic, and even the driveways of the homes bordering the park were blocked-no one could get in or out by car. When the day of the rally dawned, Parental Unit strolled over to the park at 1:00 pm, because the gates were to open at 2:00, and the president to speak between 4:00-5:00. She figured if she came an hour early, there wouldn't be much of a line.

This is what she saw after walking just a few steps from our door...The line (to one entrance point) was wrapped around six blocks or so...

But there were tables of merchandise set up to distract us as we slowly wound our way towards the entrance to the park...

          We've rounded the corner to the main entrance...

              When Parental Unit spies this silent protester.

So Parental Unit asks the elephant why he used the word "confiscate" on  his sign, rather than say "regulate" or "save"...

And he kindly stepped over to have a discussion...he was very polite and explained that the United States Department of Agriculture has the authority to actually confiscate circus animals if they document mistreatment, and that elephants are among the most mistreated and physically and emotionally harmed of all circus animals.

Anyway, here's the checkpoint gates, that were similar to airport security, complete with metal detectors and body scanners-cool! Never had to go through that to get into our park before!

Finally, we're inside the park and pretty darn close to the president's stage -it's the same stage that's up year-round for our summer theater-with bleachers added for the usual photo op of loyal supporters.

           President Obama arrives on stage at about 4:05 pm.

                            Making an impassioned plea...

These next three photos were taken by our neighbors (who are obviously better photographers than Parental Unit!)

                                 We love this one...

And diving into the crowd to press the flesh post-speech at apprximately 4:45 pm-Parental Unit did not get to shake the President's hand and was mightily disappointed.

We hope you enjoyed our mini documentation of our neighborhood's presidential visit, regardless of who you're rooting/voting for this election season.

Share